I took this photo a few weeks ago while Sweetie & I were having a campfire and watching the sunset.  Remember the velella?

These are tiny jelly fish that live on the very surface of the water, and they grow a tiny sail of cartilage from their backs and sail wherever the wind takes them.

For millions of them, the wind will blow them on to a beach to die.

I really, really identify with the velella sometimes.  Well, maybe it’s more that I’m tapping into the sense of a question mark that so many people have for our species on this planet, like we’re 7.5 billion velella blowing around on the ocean.  I tap into this feeling whenever I look at the “BIG PICTURE” stuff.

You know what I’m talking about, everyone’s felt it.

You can look up at the sky, or look at the earth from above, and marvel at the seeming randomness of it all… so many velella, at the mercy of the ocean and the wind.

But you also can’t escape the artistry of it, the beauty of the world from above, how pretty everything is when you just look at it in the right way.

How the velella sparkle in the sunset on the beach.

It’s all so fleeting and temporary.  It’s also timeless and beautiful.

Am I getting a little too philosophical for y’all today?  Here’s what the velella made me think:

God, we’re all just sparkling little husks on the beach.

How do you wrap up a sense of fatalism, reverence and expansiveness in one sentence?  One thought?

In that moment, at the same time I was absorbing this sense of fatalism and acceptance, I also thought that the velella *choose* to be as pretty as they are in death.  They’re like little sequins in the sunlight.  Palm-sized jewels underfoot.

And then I thought how important it is to *be* beautiful, to add beauty to the world, to just be graceful, accepting and shiny.  How every little velella made my world sparkle that night.